The RSO held a four-day Regional Training Workshop on Smuggling of Migrants over 4-8 October in Bangkok, Thailand, bringing together law enforcement, border security and immigration control and maritime officials from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
The 25 delegates, representing a wide range of operational areas of focus, shared trends and developments across their Member States, and discussed key challenges facing them in their work when countering the smuggling of migrants.
Canada Border Service Agencies, New Zealand National Police and the United Nations Refugees Agency (UNHCR) provided expert input and support, sharing their insights on the application of international laws in investigation and emphasising the importance of cross-border cooperation and vigilance against corruption.
Participants built practical skills to support search and rescue operations, and best practice for investigations. Participants discussed challenges around sharing information with international counterparts, and shared best practice around information collection and dissemination.
The four-day training workshop is designed to bring together international counterparts and encourage new connections and cooperation, both in the context of a local and regional framework.
Building on the skills developed and ideas generated at the training, delegates will implement their key-learnings and individual plans to disseminate information and implement the best practices with fellow colleagues and agencies in their respective countries. We are also planning to have a follow up meeting in coming weeks for the group to reconvene and share how learning has been put into practice.
Roy Suganda Sinurat, Indonesian National Police said: My experience after attending the RSO training is that I gained new experiences and knowledge, and I also made new friends from other countries who work in the same field to support our future tasks. What stood out to me during the training was that we were encouraged and sharpened to delve deeper into the techniques for investigating human trafficking and human smuggling cases. We were also trained to analyse cases more effectively by considering multiple perspectives. My plan is to share the knowledge I gained with my team by conducting regular meetings for the analysis and evaluation of each case we handle.
Commander Surin Boonaek, Chief of Technical Affairs Section, Military Legislation Division, Royal Thai Navy said: The main thing that stood out to me was the element of cooperation and information sharing related to data and intelligence to manage and handle smuggling of migrant cases. After the training workshop, I shared all knowledge and experiences I learned from RSO training with my colleagues.
